The Renaissance: A Very Short Introduction (2006) by Jerry Brotton

The term Renaissance is synonymous with art. Yet, in this brisk 127-page monograph on the Renaissance by professor Jerry Brotton from the University of London, art and the famed artists of the period play a very small role (e.g. Leonardo da Vinci appears just three times in the index, Raphael just four times). Brotton argues that the Renaissance was about much more than just art. It was about trade, finance, commodities, patronage, the printing press, scientific experimentation, imperial competition, and exchange with non-European cultures. The upshot of all this commotion and interaction was the emergence of a new kind of self conscious individualism, which led to the creation of modernity, he says. The revival of classical antiquity in combination with the discovery of the wider world for the first time created a spiritual individual.

Brotton writes that the term “Renaissance” “describes both a period in history [1400-1600] and a more general idea of cultural renewal” – a profound and enduring upheaval and transformation in culture, politics, art, and society. This upheaval was driven mainly by humanism, the course of study followed by Renaissance elites. The humanities included a mix of grammar, logic, and rhetoric (known as the trivium) along with math, geometry, astronomy, and music (the quadrivium). This mix of subjects was considered essential for worldly success. The humanities created a whole new class of educated gentlemen known as “New Men.” Brotton writes that this type of man and his world is brilliantly captured in the portrait “The Ambassadors” by Hans Holbein (1533).

Admiration and emulation of ancient Greek and Roman art, architecture, and literature was at the foundation of the Renaissance movement beginning in the fourteenth century, but Brotton says it was much more complex than that. Eastern culture, especially that from Cairo, Damascus, and Aleppo, played a fundamental role as well, particularly in Venice, the great entrepot of exotic eastern goods flowing into the west. Brotton says that the impact of eastern culture and consumption on western life was “gradual but profound.” The author cites Bellini’s painting “Saint Mark Preaching at Alexandria” (1507) as an exquisite example of “Europe’s fascination with the culture, architecture, and communities of the east.” Indeed, Brotton claims that “there were no clear geographical or political barriers between east and west in the Renaissance.” Trade and ideas flowed almost effortlessly between the two cultures.

The Renaissance emerged in the fourteenth century just as Europe was recovering from the Black Death. One consequence of all the plague was the accumulation of wealth in the hands of a small but rich elite, which drove changes in the demand and consumption of luxury goods. Demand for exotic goods, mostly from the east, was facilitated by a dramatic increase in the payloads of the ships carrying goods to Venice. Narrow, oared ships called galleys could carry perhaps 100 barrels. Heavy, round-bottomed and masted ships called cogs could carry 300 barrels. By the end of the fifteenth century the three-masted caravel accommodated over 400 barrels. To facilitate this burgeoning trade, banking houses, like the Medici in Florence and Fuggers in Augsburg, developed bills of exchange, the ancestor of the modern paper check. Meanwhile, the end of the Hundred Years War in 1453 stimulated a greater circulation of trade between northern and southern Europe.

Trade and wealth also fostered the rise of Renaissance humanism, the systematic study of classical works as the key to creating successful, cultivated, civilized individuals who used these new skills within everyday life. The classics not only made one more humane and thoughtful; they were also pragmatic, providing practical, real world skills required for social advancement, such as letter writing and public speaking. The students of humanism increasingly went to work within the emerging bureaucratic apparatus of their city state. Humanism was largely disseminated by the revolutionary medium of the printing press, which Brotton calls “the most important technological and cultural innovation of the Renaissance.” Invented in the 1450s, by the 1480s printing presses were established in most of the major cities of northern Europe. By 1500, up to 15 million books had been published in 40,000 different editions. By the 1530s a printed copy of the New Testament, once something only the super rich could afford, was available at the cost of a laborer’s daily wage. “The consequence of this massive dissemination of print was a revolution in knowledge and communication that affected society from top to bottom.” Not only were ideas transmitted far and wide, but vernacular languages were slowly standardized, ultimately leading individuals to define themselves as a member of a nation rather than in relation to their religion or ruler.

Next, Brotton covers the important issue of religion. He says that “Religion in the Renaissance was in perpetual crisis.” In 1435, humanist scholar Lorenzo Valla showed that the “Donation of Constantine,” which supposedly awarded sweeping imperial and territorial powers to the papacy, was, in fact, an eighth century forgery. There were a number of unsuccessful church councils convened to heal rifts within the church, whether that be rival popes in Rome and Avignon or the split between Eastern Orthodox and the Roman Catholic church. Brotton says that the Council of Florence begun in 1437 was “a defining moment of the Renaissance.” It failed to consolidate the imperial power of the church, but as a political and cultural event it was a triumph. The transmission of important classical texts, ideas, and art objects meant that the Council had “a decisive effect on the art and scholarship of late 15th-century Italy.”

The church dominated daily life in fifteenth century Europe. It provided a ritual method of living day to day, rather than a rigid set of theological beliefs. The individual had no direct relationship with God; divine intercession was handled by the church and priests only. Martin Luther, upset by the aggressive sale of indulgences to cover the skyrocketing costs of building the new St Peter’s Basilica, argued that God gave faith directly to the individual, who maintained an ongoing, personal relationship with Him. No outside mediation – priests, saints, relics, pilgrimages, indulgences – was necessary and nor could it affect salvation. “Humanism and printing lay at the heart of the rise and spread of Luther’s ideas,” Brotton writes. Humanists possessed the philosophical and philological training necessary to perform thoughtful exegesis on Scripture. Luther was the first best-selling author in the age of the printing press. Between 1517 and 1520, he wrote over 30 tracts, which were distributed in over 300,000 copies. He was responsible for one third of all books sold in the German language in the 1520s. In 1545 the Catholic Church kicked off the Counter-Reformation with the decades long Council of Trent. Brotton says that Trent was remarkably successful: by 1600 a third of the laity lost to Rome returned to the fold as a result of the Counter-Reformation.

Global exploration by the Portuguese and Spanish, and then the Dutch and English, transformed the political map of the Renaissance world as much as the printing press. Ptolemy’s world picture, first developed in Alexandria in the second century AD and broadly accepted ever since, had been completely shattered by the year 1500. The Age of Discovery was driven primarily by trade – and greed – but the gold and silver flowing back to Europe from the New World quickly dwarfed the revenue of the eastern spice trade. Rather than establishing a trade network, European imperial powers turned the New World into one giant slave and mining colony. It is estimated that the indigenous population in the Americas dropped from roughly 80 million in 1500 (roughly 20% of the total world population) to just 10 million by 1550 (2% of the world population). Meanwhile, during roughly the same period 40,000 black Africans were shipped to the New World to replace lost labor. By 1600, 270 tons of silver and 2 tons of gold were flowing into Europe every year from the Americas, causing wages and the cost of living to soar, and providing the framework for long-term development of European capitalism.

The sixteenth century witnessed a revolution in science and philosophy. In 1543, two books were published within one month of each other that forever changed how people observed their world: “On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres” by Nicolaus Copernicus and “On the Structure of the Human Body” by Andreas Vesalius. “While Vesalius discovered the microscopic secrets of the human body,” Brotton writes, “Copernicus explored the macroscopic mysteries of the universe.” Merchants and financiers soon realized that investing in science could be a profitable business. By the early seventeenth century, a period no longer technically part of the Renaissance, scientific inquiry had become evidence-based. Francis Bacon (1561-1626) called for a new vision of scientific knowledge based on the careful compilation of natural data based on observation, experimentation, and induction (i.e. the inference of a general law from particular instances).

Finally, Brotton discusses literature, particularly Petrarch and Shakespeare and lyric poetry, which he says was “esteemed as the pinnacle of literary creativity in the Renaissance.” It was Shakespeare’s drama that Brotton says “marks a decisive shift from the classical, humanist tradition…that signaled the end of the Renaissance,” although many Shakespeare characters, such as Hamlet, were quintessential Renaissance men.

In closing, “The Renaissance: A Very Short Introduction” is another gem in Oxford’s brilliant series.